Long Time, Sorry for the Silence

Well, it's been a long time, more than two weeks, and I haven't visited with you. I'm sorry. I got stuck in a lot of work and while I had a lot to share I was just too darned tired. I still am, but what the heck.
Right after my last post sometime in mid-August, Chepa returned from Indiana and her boyfriend with my Madeleina and her Sierra and Alexa. I was in cat heaven, dancing for so much joy I burned meals, overbought foot to the point my fridge was too full and generally had a fantastic few early days with them.
But then, having painted the fence and cleaned the chicken coop, it was time to buy birds: Birds we bought: 6 ducks and 15 chickens. Two ducks and two chickens disappeared in the first four nights, so we needed to refence the coop. And add two feet to the top. But at the same time, I had a cover story for the FW Weekly due, a news feature for the Weekly due, my column due at Skunk magazine and I'd invited 50 people to a weekend at my house for jungle medicines and free food, 24 of whom promised to show.
Which meant I started looking at my house like they would, which meant I had to tear the house down and rebuild it into an acceptable manse or suffer the emotional crisis of not measuring up. Well, I scrubbed, cleaned, mowed, raked, went over the garage with a fine tooth comb. I enlisted Madeleina and Italo, couldn't budge Marco and had a week-long battle with him that was furious and not pretty over his refusal to help, even with his own dishes (settled amicably, somehow, after I gave up trying. He simply hates being told what to do and will only work when he initiates the process, unless he's being paid. I love him but it's frustrating in a family where people are not being paid to work).
Did not get to rebuild my house but did get it looking reasonable and then filled the fridge with an additional $400 in food that no one was going to eat because the jungle medicines need to be taken on empty stomachs. Then the guests arrived and we had a great time--two of them finished the chicken coup fence heightening for me, thank you a million times--and then I led ceremony. What the heck am I doing leading ceremony? I mean, I had the most experience but really, I'm such a rotten, flawed human being I should never lead a parade to the garbage dump, much less a sort of holy evening when people put their hearts/souls and physical bodies in my command. Nonetheless I did it and most people survived and thrived, by sheer luck.
But it was also the time to get Madeleina, recently returned from 10 weeks in Indiana with Chepa's amor, ready for school. And to get Italo off to college again for the soccer season. He's captain of the team this year and while he's away his girl, pregnant Sarah, is going to live at Chepa's. She's rented a room there and made a nice nest with furniture I could never afford. Very nice, but leaves a hole in this house and means Italo won't even be visiting on weekends much. Hmmm....that's not a hole, that's a freaking void.
And it also means that feeding the birds, dogs, cats, goats, ducks and chickens falls to me, even though I'm only the guy who accepted them being here, rather than the inspiration.
So I've been sort of crazy, trying to catch up with my life and have not been here. And if I had 3 hours I'd write 50 pages on the fantastic laughter and love and sadness--due to the deaths of friends--in the last couple of weeks.
But I won't cause I don't have the time. I've just come from the Fort Worth Zoo, which I'm going to use as the opener for a cover story for a business magazine that is due this Wednesday. I thought the contract read Sept 12, and just today discovered it read Sept 2. Yikes! That is cutting it damned short. Worse, it's about loving work, loving what you do, and the advantages of working from fun rather than desperation. Oy, Vey! Ha! Like I even know what fun is anymore now that I'm racked between this and that space! And I have a cover story of 6,000 words due on friday for someone else! Can you imagine? Even I, with an ability to bs endlessly am sort of at a loss of how I'm to come up with 10,000 words that make sense in the next 6 days.
So that's it. That's why I have not written. I apologize again. There were about 20 great stories I would have loved to tell but they're history now. I'll try to be more on the ball as we move forward.